• Since Maud’s own mother died when she was just a toddler, it was her Aunt Emily who took her to school on her very first day.  Aunt Emily was the last of Maud’s mother’s sibling s to leave home and took care of Maud until she was old enough to go to school.  Although she was Maud’s babysitter for a number of years, it appears that the two women never had a strong affection for each other.
• Maud was left in the care of the “big girls” on this first day.
• She was the subject of laughter on her second day of school when she arrived late and forgot to take off her hat.  Though she may have been teased for these mistakes, her early aptitude for reading was recognized and praised by her teacher.  She was told she was better than anyone else in the class in this subject.
• Maud hated having to wear buttoned boots when all the other schoolchildren went barefoot to school during the warm weather.
• She also resented wearing the full length sleeved aprons her grandmother insisted she wear.  Her classmates had never seen aprons with sleeves before and called them “baby aprons”.
• Many of Maud’s first teachers were single men who, because of the low wages, were looking to move into a more “lucrative” profession.  This is the reason why women became more involved in the profession of teaching, since they made enough to support themselves before getting married.
• Maud’s favourite teacher, John K. Fraser, awarded her a book of fairy tales because of her fine work.  She admired him greatly – especially for the fact that he dared to walk through the woods at night!  He boarded with her family when she was eight years old.
• Since there was only one teacher in charge of 40 to 50 students, and it was impossible for them to supervise each child closely, Maud took the opportunity to sneak in sessions of poetry writing with her friend Alma Macneill.  However, her life “flashed before her eyes” when her teacher, the subject of Maud’s latest poem hastily scribbled on her slate, snatched it out of her hands.  Luckily, he returned the slate unread.  But Maud was very careful from then on…

To read more about Maud’s childhood experiences, take a look at The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album.